The Palestinians After 1948 (Reposting of an Earlier Podcast)

StocktonAfterClass

What happened after the armistice in January of 1949?

Of course, the major consequence was the Palestinian refugees. Thinking only of what we consider the internationally recognized boundaries of Israel, probably 80% or more of all the Palestinians inside of that area on January 1, 1948 were gone by December 31, 1948. This is the real “catastrophe,” or nakhba, as the Palestinians call it. The Israelis were insistent that none of these refugees would be allowed to return.

I am very sorry I can’t deliver an hour-long talk on the refugee situation. I am just not sure how to make it work. Still, I have tried to incorporate key points into this talk and into the previous talk on the Palestine War of 1948. And again, I invite you to go to Deep Blue (see that previous podcast if you are unclear) where I have posted my briefing document on The Palestinian Refugees of 1948. As of April, 2021 this document has nearly 13,000 downloads from around the world. It is a very thorough summary of the data on the refugees, of the recent research on the topic, of the personal stories of what happened, and of the argumentation. For those interested in this subject, it is a valuable source.

If you would like to read a short novel consider Khirbet Khizeh by S. Yizhar. The author was a noted literary figure (Yizhar Smilansky) who concealed his true identity so he could tell what happened when his unit took control of a Palestinian village in 1948. It was translated into English in 2008. It shocked many Israelis to realize that a person of such literary stature had experienced these things.

I mentioned the mayor of El Bireh, a Palestinian town just 10 miles north of Jerusalem. His name was Abdul Jawad Saleh. I met him in Amman in 1987. He was one of the most respected of the Palestinian leaders and was later put in charge of the PLO treasury because everyone trusted him. He told me that one evening he had a knock at the door and two soldiers told him the governor wanted to talk to him. This was not unusual so he went without resistance. But they took him to the Jordan border (I think in the southern desert) and pushed him into Jordan. They then announced on the radio that he had been expelled. The Jordanians rushed units into the area to find him before he died of thirst. I met him in his apartment. His daughter was visiting and his grandson. He was the person who made the map of the dead cities and villages of Palestine. I asked him why they had expelled him (which is a violation of international law, by the way). He said they never tell you why they are expelling you or detaining you but he thought it had to do with the fact that the city was erecting a “mother statue.” It depicts a mother lifting her child to reach for a goal. It is obviously a metaphor for the Palestinian situation. He thought it was just too symbolically powerful for the Israelis.

When the archives were opened by Menachem Begin in the late 1970s, Israeli scholars plunged in. By the late 1980s, they produced a new wave of histories that went beyond wartime hero narratives but relied heavily upon primary source materials: diaries and journals and memos. They were called the New Historians. Their research exploded myths about how the Palestinians had fled of their own will, for example or that the military maintained a “purity of arms.” Ilan Pappe and Avi Shlaim and Simcha Flappan were three of these. Tom Segev’s book, The First Israelis, focusing upon 1949, after the fighting was over, brings surprising new perspectives to the issues. These historians are hated by those on the Israeli right.